Once Again: The False Dichotomy Zone: God did it vs. Deep time did it!

In my last post I remarked on Uncommon Descent’s Barry Arrington’s tendency to frame the question of creation within the “God did it vs. Evolution did it” dichotomy. Subsequently, I was very interested to see a blog post by Young Earth Creationist Jason Lisle where, as I’d expect, we find that he too promulgates a similar perspective.  Arrington, however, isn’t a YEC as far as I’m aware, but in spite of that the “God did it vs. Evolution did it” dichotomy is seductive enough to lure a wide spectrum of views; in fact the theological categories of some atheists betray a similar underlying structure.

In a post entitled “Deep time- the god of our age” and dated 9^th November Lisle tells us:

However, by their actions, Deep Time disciples do indeed imbue him with personal characteristics and powers that only a conscious being can possess…..Consider (1) Deep Time has characteristics and powers that belong to God alone.  In fact, the parallels are truly amazing!  For example, Deep Time has the power of creation.  According to His followers, he has made stars, planets, and galaxies.  He has made canyons, and mountains.  Deep Time separated the continents and oceans.  He has made all living creatures through his servant – Evolution.  Indeed, Deep Time took the elements of this world, and from that dust he made man.  These are all powers and actions that are rightly reserved for God alone (Nehemiah 9:6, Psalm 33:6, Job 38:4, Psalm 104:5-8, Genesis 1:9-10, Genesis 1:20-25, Genesis 2:7).

Lisle, of course, doesn’t believe in deep time but he nevertheless holds in his head the folk caricature that portrays the physical processes of deep time as truly creative powers rendering a Creator God redundant. Lisle is probably a fundamentalist by inheritance; that is, he was born and bred into a fundamentalism where he was taught to think of those physical processes as an imaginary pretender to God’s unique position as Creator. In Lisle’s fundamentalist mind the description of radical changes in the pattern of matter (such as gas to galaxies or elements to organisms) using physical algorithms is to render God redundant and to thereby threaten faith. In fact as he says above these are powers only a conscious being can possess. For Lisle it is an either/or choice between God and physical processes.

But there is no rational basis for Lisle’s distorted caricature of physical processes as a god pretender. So-called deep time is neither very deep nor capable of answering the profound questions about ultimate origins. A few billion years is completely swamped by the colossal dimensions of the combinatorial space in which we find living structures located. To locate those configurations or locate the rare physical regime capable of generating them (if such has a mathematical existence) is a task of extreme computational complexity, a task well beyond the resources of pure chance and our deep time.  “Deep time” leaves those questions of ultimate origin untouched. A back handed acknowledgement of this fact is the popular recourse to those multiverse scenarios that attempt (vainly I believe) to take the stress away from having to posit a cosmos that must be endowed with very peculiar and special conditions for it to work. “Deep Time” is certainly no god and cannot even be caricatured as such: Deep time is in fact a mere host that has been impressed with some very unique patterns of behaviour; that these patterns have been smeared out over a relatively short space of time is remarkable. But the fearful Lisle is not going to see it in these intellectually neutral terms; for a marginalized/persecuted YEC like Lisle the claimed output of deep time looks so suspiciously god-like that for him the question of creation is very much framed, as it is for Barry Arrington, by a dichotomy - in this case the specific dichotomy is being expressed as “God did it vs. deep time did it”. *

Another of Lisle’s naiveties is the common YEC misconception that separates out “historical science” (such as evolution) from “operational science” (such as physics):

  Although Deep Time has nothing to do with science, often the science and the stories are interleaved such that it can be difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends! 

YEC’s are unable to deny the success of the hard sciences like physics and chemistry, sciences which deal with present tense continuous processes. But natural history, of course, is anathema to YECs and so they attempt to drive a wedge between history and physics. But as Lisle admits above it can be difficult to tell where one begins and the other ends! There are good reasons for those difficulties of distinction, because all science is at once both highly historical and yet highly contemporaneous: The present tense continuous processes of physics are justified by a history of documented evidences, evidences that are in fact signals from the past. Moreover, new evidence never emanates from circumstances that exactly reproduce the past and so the interpretation of new evidence depends very much on a knowledge of history. Ergo, physics is grounded in history. And historical science is grounded in the present: Events long past leave a present tense continuous trace of evidence that can be used as test material. In both physics and history the logic of the general epistemic problem is the same: Viz. that of endeavouring to infer the form of an otherwise inaccessible structure from a set of data samples. Fundamentalist attempts to undermine “historical science” ultimately subverts both science and history and rides rough-shod over the assumption of a rational readable world.

Lisle’s thought life is impeded by a set of flawed stock arguments and concepts repeated endlessly in YEC circles. These he can’t or won’t think round; to question or review those stock arguments and concepts will smack of compromise and spiritual failure. In fact the chief polemical weapon in the fundamentalist’s armory is less reason than it is a deep resource of spiritual invective that is ready to use to impugn the consciences of Christians who question the YEC tradition. The following quotes speak for themselves:

Disciples of Deep Time worship him with reverence and awe.  They may deny this with their words, but their actions indicate that they do cherish this god above all others.  This makes sense: if indeed Deep Time does have the powers and abilities that his disciples attribute to him, then he should be worshiped…..Since Deep Time is so contrary in nature and actions to the God of Scripture, it is disappointing that many Christians attempt to honor and serve both of them……. It’s not that modern Christians want to give up the True God.  Rather, they simply want to add another god, one who is contrary in nature and actions to the Living God…... Remember reading of Baal?  Baal was the Canaanite god of weather and thunder.  The Israelites often fell into Baal worship, in violation of the First Commandment.  Elijah pointed out their absurd inconsistency in 1 Kings 18:21, “How long will you hesitate between two opinions? If the LORD is God, follow Him; but if Baal, follow him.”  It was illogical for the Israelites to attempt to serve two contrary gods (and immoral).  Are we any different today when we try to add other gods to Christianity? No man can serve two masters (Matthew 6:24).  …..Those Christians who want to believe in Deep Time along with the biblical God are being dreadfully inconsistent.  They may claim that they serve the Lord alone, but by their actions they reveal that Deep Time is their primary god, and the Lord is secondary. 

According to Lisle Christian scientists like John Polkinghorne, Chris Isham, Ken Miller, Denis Alexander, Simon Conway Morris, John Lennox, and Francis Collins, (not to mention many Uncommon Descent contributors) are worshipers of a strange god who is contrary in nature to the living God. Lisle is accusing them of violating the first commandment and therefore of being little better than idolaters and worshippers of Baal; in fact Lisle implies that deep time is their primary god! Given that God is probably the most important thing in the life of these scientists we begin to appreciate how deeply a YEC is prepared to insult the faith of other Christians.

But to be fair to Lisle we need to put this sort of invective in context. Lisle is very much part of a minority, a minority he perceives as persecuted and having to fight discouragement:

Textbooks that fail to acknowledge the supreme lordship of Deep Time are not likely to be used, or even published.  Those who wish to work as professors must swear allegiance to Deep Time and His servant Evolution if they want to be hired……It can be discouraging to see so many Christians attempting to serve the pagan god Deep Time.  It often feels like the Christians who truly stand on God’s Word are so very few.  But we should remember that Elijah was discouraged as well.  In a time when he was afraid for his life, and thinking that he was the last faithful believer he cried out to God (1 Kings 19:14).  But the Lord responded, “Yet I will leave 7,000 in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal and every mouth that has not kissed him.” (1 Kings 19:18).  Think of this the next time you are discouraged about the rampant compromise within the Church.  How many more Christians has the Lord kept for Himself who have not bowed the knee to Deep Time?

Lisle does try hard to be logical and scientific, and his personality type favours a rational faith. But he is limited by the strictures of the inscribed-in-stone 6000 year time frame of fundamentalist Christianity, a stricture impelled with the kind of threatening spiritual language that we have seen above. Lisle is stuck with the legacies of his past; a born and bred YEC he is now trapped. Status and loyalty binds Lisle to his flock of admiring followers who look to him as a champion against the encroaching philosophy of profane science. Therefore Lisle is unable turn his back on them without a great betrayal apparently taking place. It is probably too late for Lisle to change; his boats were burnt long ago. Thus Lisle finds himself very much locked in to a reactionary and anachronistic cultural minority not unlike the Amish. But for the Amish a self-imposed separation insulates them from the grief and aggravation that comes through intercultural contact. But this is not an option for YECs who are committed to doing all they can to convert Christians to their 6000 year time scale, But if they are making such little headway with Christians what hope do they have with secularists? No wonder Lisle is discouraged!

Fundamentalists like Lisle are apt to regard those who are not with them as being against them and in their spiritual conceit they see those who are against them as necessarily also against God. Not surprisingly then for the marginalized fundamentalist evil appears to lurk round every corner and they view the world beyond their cultural boundaries as totally depraved. Consequently, a profound distrust colours and pervades their perception of their social surroundings and this makes them susceptible to the paranoia and false dichotomies of conspiracy theory. (Also see here) For fundamentalists the creation question is also cast into the mold of a false dichotomy: Either one accepts  the YEC view of God as a magician who speaks creation into existence or one is in danger of entering the eternal fire for believing  nonsense about creation somehow being able to create  itself!

Addendum 01/12/12: Fundie 'Elder Statesman' Breaks Rank!

An indication of the isolation of YECs comes from a video posted on PZ Myers' blog (A very useful source on  the state of American fundamentalism). In this video we find Pat Robertson, an "Elder Statesman" of American right wing Christianity, disowning Young Earth Creationism. This is what Robertson says:

If you fight revealed science, you’re going to lose your children! And I believe in telling them the way it was.

As far as I'm aware Robertson is influential so this looks to be good news. But then given the number of pathetic "prophetic" gaffs he's known for this could be a  mixed blessing.

Note 9/03/13  The following is a quote I have recently picked up from a fundamentalist:  "....the big bang is a secular idea to try to explain the universe without God! ". In this fundamentalist's mind those who believe in big bang are, as we have also seen in the case of Lisle above, being accused of setting up an alternative to creation by God. This straw man is being wrongly foisted on Christians who accept established science and who see the cosmic story as simply a description of a natural history rather than the god pretender portrayed in these fundamentalist's distorted caricature. The "God did it vs. Naturalism did it" is a dichotomy that is very much centre stage in the fundamentalists mindset.

Footnote:

* In his post Lisle attempts to press home his argument against deep time with a moral argument about the dispassionate cruelty of physical processes. This is essentially a question bound up with problem of evil and suffering, an issue I’m certainly not touching here except to say that it is as much a problem post-Adam as it is pre-Adam. 

The False Dichotomy Zone.

Religious fanaticism vs. a cool head

When Barry Arrington took over from William Dembksi as moderator of Uncommon Descent that blog took an intellectual down turn. Arrington sees the evolution debate very much in the frame of the “God did it vs. Evolution did it” dichotomy. Arrington, it turns out, is a fine example of the polarized naturalism vs. supernaturalism habits of mind that dominate the American debate. What brought this small post of mine on was a post by Arrington that typifies his views. I’m not going to a spend my time systematically working through Arrington’s article exposing his philosophical naiveties except to provide this link which deals with the God did it vs. Evolution did it dichotomy. (See also here)

I don’t particularly want to make enemies of Uncommon Descent; a lot of worthwhile posts and commentary can be found there and I am an open ear when it comes to criticism of the mechanism of evolution as it is currently understood. However, there are some contributors at Uncommon Descent that have thoroughly alienated me. American ID appears to have become bound up with the very dangerous political polarization we see in that country. Fanatical commentary emanates from high places, such as, for example, the denouncement of evolution as Lies straight from the pit of hell. With this sort of fulmination the musty smell of irrational fundamentalist zealotry hits you straight away; it comes straight from the seething cauldron of authoritarian, sectarian and cult religion. It gives me the creeps.

Coping with White Space

In the video above atheist Sean Carroll explores the implications of his ulterior metaphysical vision of ontology, an ontology he believes to be all embracing and exclusive, in affect defining the boundaries of all he thinks has been, will be and is. This kind of ontological exclusivism is a common metaphysical interpretation of physics. Although I’m a great fan of the coherent highly integrated world that physics paints, I wouldn’t say that I’m so taken by it as to make it the basis of an all excluding metaphysical ontology, a metaphysic that doesn’t dare speak its name for of fear of being recognized as such.

Nevertheless there is plausibility in Carroll’s philosophy, a philosophy which is an arguable construction any reasonable person may feel they can place upon human experience and the human predicament. But plausible is not the same as rationally obliging, and in my opinion one can dissent from Carroll’s views with a clear scientific conscience in spite of the insistence of some secular fundamentalists to the contrary. The sort of ontological exclusiveness Carroll espouses looks suspiciously like a way of coping with the white spaces at the edge of knowledge by circumscribing it away.

I would not only question Carroll’s ontology but also his epistemology. There is a delicate balancing act to be maintained in the negotiations between institutionalized science and the wild card of human experience. If either is allowed to dominate the other intellectual pathology is a consequence. For example, there may come a point when the political entrenchment of institutionalized theories is so great that it is impossible for experience to inform them any longer, as Galileo found out. Conversely experience can lack the rational framing that it badly needs for its correct interpretation – something that I can personally testify to having seen what happens so often in evangelical Christianity. As regards this balancing act I find Carroll far too institutionalised to be an objective observer.

Video Content

Near the beginning of the video Carroll tells us triumphant tones:

In our thousands of years long quest in understanding the universe and how it works.. …we have finally figured out what the rules of the game are.

My Comment: May be or may be not; I can’t be this bullish myself. I construe Carroll’s scientific triumphalism as a reaction against the religious fundamentalists with their quack “science” who are very much abroad in America. Anomalies, in particular, have a way of eventually opening up into huge paradigm shattering vistas. And who knows there is still plenty of room in physics for anomalies to crop up! Physics is yet a fully integrated and exclusive system.

Carroll tells us that the (relatively) easy part of science is that of determining the rules of the (physical) game but the hard part is applying those rules successfully. This is probably true. However, I think we need to bear in mind that there are two types of rules: Viz: a) The local rules of a cellular system ontology. b) The non-local rules of an ontology constrained by global constraints. Currently physics is almost exclusively based on a cellular ontology, which is probably why the ideas of Nobel Prize winning physicist Ken Wilson apply. But what if non-local rules exist? Could we easily detect them?

Your friend says “I’ve always been partial to the green cheese hypothesis; I think the moon is made of green cheese”

My Comment: Carroll commences the easy work of refuting this idea from the point of view of physics, a physics which allows us “ahead of time” to contradict such arbitrarily constructed hypotheses. But this is as easy as shooting a rabbit that’s just been pulled out of the hat. Life is much more difficult if the rabbit has been spawned in the hedgerows and knows the ways of the wild: The moon landing conspiracy theory is also absurd, but it is a lot less easy to refute with just mockery alone. This is because it is not an arbitrary creation and didn’t appear “just like that” out of a hat. Rather, it has a history with causes deeply embedded in the current social malaise, a malaise of disaffection that generates a strong emotional rationale for this kind of conspiracy theory. Moreover, it doesn't do anything so obviously radical as to posit a very explicit break in the laws of physics (Unlike the green cheese “hypothesis”)

We don’t understand turbulence, weather, high temperature superconductivity, cancer, consciousness, economics…

My Comment: Note that “consciousness” appears in this list – it’s being categorized as a phenomenon to observe and explain, just like the weather: But where do I go to observe some consciousness? Don’t tell me a person’s brain, because all I ever observe there is a combination of a neural activity and emergent behaviour.  If “consciousness” is just a way of talking about a complex emergent aggregated phenomenon, then what’s the analogous term for that aggregated phenomenon we call the weather? Weather is a system composed of a huge number of particles which exhibits emergent behaviour such as storms, but it is wrong to conclude that storms are to air and water molecule as consciousness is to neurons. The conundrum of consciousness is that although human beings are a cluster of emergent behaviours that is not the same as consciousness. One doesn't observe conscious cognition; rather it is conscious cognition that does the observing; it is the beholder and not the beheld. Carroll can’t have it both ways; either he should simply ignore consciousness, or if he wishes to recognize it as something significant (as he has effectively done above) he shouldn't include it in his phenomenon list; in which case this would be an admission that consciousness doesn't classify as a member of the class of phenomena.

 You can’t bend spoons with the sheer force of your mind. There are no forces of nature which allow you to do that…Astrology cannot work; there  is no force that can extend from those stars to my little birth place…. We already know ahead of time that they cannot be right because the claims they are making are not compatible with the laws of physics as we know them

My Comment; Fair enough but only if we feel sure, “ahead of time”, that the cellular model of physics is all embracing and exclusive!

There is no life after death…That’s because there are no particles or forces that could contain the information in your brain after you die…that’s not compatible with the laws of physics as we know them. We don’t need to look carefully at past life regression studies or anything like that; the claim violates the laws of physics

My Comment: I suspect Carroll may be trading here on the connotations of the words “laws” and “violation”. The laws of physics don’t know themselves to be literally “laws” that cannot be “violated”; rather they are mathematical constructions describing patterns consistent with our observational experiences to date; this latter take, which uses neutral words like patterns in place of emotive words like laws or rules, doesn’t allow us to form statements with negative connotations such as “A violation in the laws of physics”.

Physics comes with an implicit understanding of the set of circumstances to which it applies: Viz: For all O then P , where O is a set of observational/experiential connections and P is the claim that physics ultimately “explains” O. The big question here is this: Are we to regard “O” as covering all possible experiences or just a subset of experience? At this point a philosophical leap has to made: For example, we might assume that the ontology physics handles (i.e. objects called fields) is inclusive of all there can be and that therefore “O” must cover all experiential connections. Accordingly, it might be argued that there is no observational evidence for O that isn’t explained by physics.  (This is what I mean when I refer to Carroll’s ulterior ontology). But in saying that we are, in fact, making a universal statement that is subject to the test of experience; that is, ultimately it is experience that is used to negotiate with a statement like For all O then P. Ergo, sufficiently compelling claims of occult experience are always on the agenda for analysis whatever Carroll likes to think ahead of time.

Having said that, however, we must recognize that “occult” claims are usually liminal in nature and therefore Carroll can hardly be blamed if he feels “ahead time” that these experiences are not compelling enough to warrant further investigation. Moreover, Carroll has a huge stake in the scientific establishment and therefore may be motivated by the all too human trait of desiring to draw a line round what can be defined as authentic experience, thus paving the way, ahead of time, for dissenters to be accused of the scientific equivalent of heresy!

There is no ghost in the machine. What you are is a collection of atoms obeying the laws of nature.

My Comment: I don’t believe in the ghost in the machine myself, but Carroll’s second statement here is blindingly obvious, and yet at the same time omits the blindingly obvious. It is clear that any observation one makes on a person will only ever reveal the third person perspective of matter aggregates in motion; that and emergent behaviour.  It is also obvious, and this is what Carroll is missing, those observations which are the data samples for our physical theories about human behaviour cannot be meaningfully divorced from the conscious cognition that is the assumed agent and underwriter of these samples. Ergo, third person narratives always entail an implicit and irremovable first person perspective. However we couch it, whether in first or third person terms, conscious cognition is always lurking in the background as the source of the data samples that are the rationale of all theorizing.

 I am myself very comfortable with the idea that conscious cognition can “explain itself” in the third persons terms of atomic motions in the brain. But in spite of that we never approach a another person is if they are just a collection of atoms or even a collection of high level stories that are simply a convenient way of talking about the emergent behaviour of that collection of atoms. Rather, a parallel story of conscious cognition is the empathic construction we make and associate with those third person observations on neural atoms; we know what it “feels like” to be that configuration of atoms and fields. It is this dual story of the first and third persons that flaws Carroll’s category system which places “weather” together with consciousness cognition. Weather may be a convenient way of talking about a huge collection of particles, but all said and done it is still a third person perspective and as such it is not a logical analogue of conscious cognition; the latter is in an entirely different logical category altogether. The stories of the first and third person perspectives cannot be reduced to one mother; they are two parallel perspectives that arise when conscious cognition makes observations on conscious cognition.

Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral. Part 2

Getting ready for the lecture

In spite of its billing Conway Morris’ lecture didn’t contain a great deal about the Christian implications of his content. However, I myself was very interested to hear his remarks on convergent evolution and the high optimization of functionality. These two facts alone suggest that whatever the engine driving evolution may be it has a startlingly high probability of generating an extremely unrepresentative class of structures. Perhaps Morris was using extraordinary facts like this to quietly argue for themselves.

I was also interested in Morris’ brief excursion into mysticism toward the end of his lecture when he referred to the mysteries of traits like the love of music and the mythopoeic nature of human beings. (In this connection see this post of mine on William Irwin Thompson) Although Morris didn't explain the significance of these traits, in some ways his was a classic response. If the world of scientific logos doesn't argue explicitly for the existence of God then one is very much thrown back on the mood of mythos that the findings of sciences invoke.

Scientific establishment figures like Conway Morris stand for a mechanism of evolution that the homunculus IDers will claim does not work. Whether or not the science behind homunculus ID is correct, this claim appears to have an underlying motivation based on a misreading of evolution as a “blind and mindless process”, incapable of creating anything. Under this assumption an intervening homunculus is needed to make good the failure of evolutionary theory. The view of evolution as a “blind and mindless process” is, ironically, also endorsed by many an atheist: That the setting up a physical regime where evolution works is in itself a task that is highly computationally complex appears not to be factored in by either party. Although I have lot of respect for the opinions of some homunculus IDers and feel that their work is often under-appreciated,  polarization has spoilt their chances of making a worthwhile contribution to the debate.

At the heart of the dispute between the evolutionists of the academic establishment and the homunculus IDers is, I suspect, a humanly insoluble problem.  To illustrate let’s start by taking a single organism. Are we able to enumerate and evaluate all the possible heritable mutations it might undergo and determine what percentage of these mutations on a per environment basis will give rise to a stable population that has the mutant gene? Even if we were able to do this for a single organism we still have to face the wild card of a changing environment. Some otherwise viable mutations may not work in a changed environment. Even with a single known organism the possible evolutionary increments it could undergo are very difficult to catalogue and evaluate. So now imagine trying to catalogue the huge open ended vistas of configuration space and attempting to determine whether the juxtaposition of possible configurations fall into relationship with one another in a way that facilitates evolution.*¹

My own guess here is that exploring configuration space is all but beyond our current computational technology with its use of linear computational streams. In fact I suspect that the problems of exploring configuration space, especially when we factor in possible environments, is computationally irreducible*² and therefore there is no quicker way of analyzing this space apart from actually designing a simulacrum with the task of trying to get evolution to work (or not work as the case may be).*³. Until then we are very much dependent on the observational sciences of molecular and paleo biology; in this sense the simulation has been done for us! 

Thanks from the clergy at the end of a fascinating and stimulating evening.

Footnotes: 
*1 There is also another question that considerably complicates this picture even further. This is what I can best describe as “informational cross fertilization”; almost a kind of “interspecies sex” if you like. In the above text I have imagined an organism undergoing an incremental change. However, if this organism exists in an environment of other organic innovations, it is conceivable that it could make a step change by somehow receiving information (via virus infection?) about these innovation, information that could be used to take its development forward by a quantum leap. This co-option process certainly happens in technological development but as I'm not a biologist I've no idea how important it is in biological evolution. If this kind of cross fertilization exists then we will have a non-linear system of change which may account for the jumps we see in evolution.
*2 The idea of computational irreducibility comes from Stephen Wolfram.
*3 Relevant to question of whether something can be rendered using analysis is the work of John Holland. See here

Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral. Part 1

Prof David Andrews introducing Simon Conway Morris at Norwich Cathedral

The following are notes I made during a lecture at Norwich Cathedral on the evening of 16^th October by Simon Conway Morris Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology at Cambridge University. The lecture was entitled “The Evolution of Intelligence – Christian Implications?” and organized by the Norfolk Science and Faith Group. (For comparison see my blog post on John Polkinghorne’s visit to Norwich Cathedral)

Prof Morris is a member of the Faraday Institute. The bill advertising the event told us that “He is best known for his work on the Burgess Shale Fossils and on evolutionary convergence. He frequently appears in public debate, arguing for evolution but against atheistic materialism”. The notes below must be treated with caution as they represent how I personally heard Morris.

Conway Morris in full flow.

David Andrews, professor of quantum chemistry at the University of East Anglia, introduced Simon Conway Morris. Morris Started his lecture by saying that he is not interested in Intelligent Design because ID is not science.

My Comment: Bad start in my opinion. I suspect that The Faraday Institute, like Biologos in America, wants to distance itself from the poor image that “ID” has amongst scientists. There seems to be a bit of playing to the gallery here as this sort of statement puts the scientific establishment at ease, something that Morris, as an establishment figure, is destined to do. My own opinion, as I have said before in this blog, is that ID is science (after a fashion) but it is not hard science. Many of the challenges to standard evolutionary theory coming from the homunculus ID community need careful consideration and should not be treated in an offhand way; but then I'm not part of the establishment so this is easy for me to say! But having said that I'm not happy with the way the de-facto ID community are handling the subject of ID; they seem to be working from a 'God did it' vs. 'Evolution did it' dichotomy. American ID seems to be motivated by an eagerness to promote a kind of 2001 Space Odyssey theory of evolutionary change. Moreover, there are times when it appears to be uncomfortably close to the crank science of the fundamentalists.

Darwin became centre stage in the science vs. evolution debate. Huxley (and others) seized on these ideas to bash the church, although Darwin himself was more cautious. Metaphysical interpretations were made of evolution e.g. that life is one big accident. Some thought evolutionary randomness implies that re-running the tape of evolution again would produce a completely different end result.

Morris said that he thinks the generation of life has a relatively high probability and therefore with the discovery of many new planets we are in for a major surprise within the next 30 years. (Presumably he means the discovery of alien life forms!)

My Comment: If he wants to stick his neck out this far it’s up to him!

Morris is optimistic about the likely evolution of intelligence because evolutionary convergent demonstrates that the independent evolution of “life’s solutions” can happen many times. However, Morris does concede we may be alone in the universe thus indicating that he actually doesn’t know, and that the foregoing is really just a gut feeling of his. The basic building blocks of life are a product of a fairly unremarkable chemistry and therefore they are likely to be universal. “Self-organization” may be a factor – consider for example the mathematical shell of the ammonite.

My Comment: Dodgy! The basic building blocks of life may not be a problem, but the apparent combinatorial explosion in the configuration space of these building blocks could be a huge problem for the evolutionary search engine unless somehow physics constrains this space considerably.

Convergence example: Dinosaur feathers have evolved at least three times on different branches of the evolutionary tree. For example; Archaeopteryx, microraptor and another dinosaur whose name I didn’t pick up all evolved feathers but all are on very diverse branches of the "tree of life".

My Comment: This is where Morris’ knowledge comes into its own: He knows the accepted evolutionary tree and what’s on it. If bog standard evolutionary processes have done as Morris suggests (i.e. produced the same solution several times) then this would require a configuration space that is highly constrained and appropriately organized.

One might expect that evolution would work well enough if organic functions were just good enough to get by, but examination shows that organic adaptations are highly optimized and not “just good enough”. They are finely tuned to “perfection”. However, in some cases the opposite seems to be true. A particular protein enzyme used in photosynthesis is very inefficient: The oxygen that the enzyme helps produce poisons the enzyme! There may be limits to evolution.

My Comment: If evolution is happening we might expect some functions to be on the road to perfection, and not yet at their optimum. However, perhaps evolution quickly finds the optimum solution and then stasis reigns from there on. This scenario is not unlike technological change where  one reaches a point of diminishing returns with the development of a particular technology as its room for improvement "maxes out"; an extrema is then reached and stasis is assumed.

Other examples of convergence: The bacterial flagellum (the ID icon) has evolved twice. The sabre tooth cat  parallels the marsupial sabre toothed “cat”. The camera eye has evolved separately in octopus and man. There are 40 different types of eyes. The camera eye has evolved 7 times. The compound eye has also evolved more than once.  The compound eye would have to be proportionally too large for a man sized animal and therefore the conclusion is that it is likely that man sized aliens would have camera eyes.

Ears and eyes have reached physical limits and therefore have reached optimum. The eye can detect one photon and ears are as sensitive as the noises created by thermal molecular motions allow.

On Intelligence: The part of the bird’s brain that deals with bird song has similarities with the part of our brain that deals with language – convergent evolution again! Dolphins and Man have similar neurological set ups but these have evolved on different parts of the evolutionary tree. Birds and apes use sticks as tools – once again a mental adaptation that has evolved in entirely different parts of the evolutionary tree.

When did we become human? When and why did we start liking pets, poetry and music?

Is there directionality in evolution? Consider mushroom genes: 30% of the genes that the nervous system uses can be found in mushrooms. Mushrooms are organisms that evolved long before the nervous system.

My Comment: How does this last comment by Morris differ from the following: One could argue that 50% (or whatever the figure is) of the elements in the periodic table can be found in the human body and these elements existed long before there were any living things. If one is to think of evolution as a case of constructing using a set of components then of course a large proportion of those parts must pre-exist prior to the structure's existence. Perhaps Morris is using this argument to hint at some kind of predestination. A retrospective view often gives one the subjective feeling of predestination; antecedents, in retrospect, somehow feel as though they are being put in to place for what the future is known to bring.

The question of consciousness – this has not been sorted. Materialism doesn’t work.

My Comment: On consciousness see here, for example. Consciousness is not just another observable object; it has an entirely different logical character in being the observer rather than the observed. Materialism is in one sense a department of conscious cognition in as much as materialism is a construct made within conscious cognition.

The humpback whale uses “music” – another convergent trait. There is a universal music. We discover music and mathematics rather than invent them.  Evolution discovers things.

My Comment: With this I would very much agree: Our world uncovers and reifies the potential objects taken from the platonic realm of possibility.

The imagination: Barfield and Tolkien talked about a mythopoeic humanity. We use Christianity to make sense of life.  We look at beauty and it somehow resonates with our emotions.

During the question and answer session Morris talked about the landscape of evolution and the fact that stable structures are few and far between. But he was reminded of the organization of the periodic table where the rules of physics imply a set of stable atoms. He also responded to one questioner by saying he had no idea where evolution is taking us.

My Comment: Morris response during Q&A was the nearest he came to talking about one of the themes of this blog. Viz: the question of the arrangement of viable organic structures in configuration space and the critical dependence of this arrangement on the given physical regime.

***

What was Morris trying to say and what are those Christian implications? One got the feeling he was trying to tell us something important but he was doing it implicitly rather than explicitly, perhaps hoping that his audience would draw out these implications. Consequently, there are issues with the above that I want to take a bit further and I hope to do so in my next post.

Through the Portal of Death and Beyond?

Did academic neurosurgeon, Eben Alexander get a quick demo of life beyond the grave?

In a blog post entitled “Newsweek-panders to the deluded again” we find atheist PZ Myers foaming at the mouth over a reported case of Near Death Experience. What may have particularly annoyed PZ in this case is that the person who is using his NDE to make claims about a heavenly realm is academic neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander, a lecturer at Harvard’s medical school. Now, you don’t get much more academic establishment than that and yet here is Alexander leading us “astray” with his scientific authority – or at least PZ Myers thinks so!

One might expect that of all people Alexander would at least have a modicum of neuro-psychological theory, and therefore something to say about the functioning of the brain (or lack of it) near death. So instead of giving us a first person account of the truly incredible why isn’t Alexander explaining his NDE in third person neuro-psychological terms, terms that PZ is predisposed to prefer? Instead Alexander stresses the reality of his experience and this clearly riles Myers.

But first let me concede this: From the perspective of Myers and myself Alexander’s affirmation of a world beyond the grave is hardly logically binding; it is certainly evidence relevant to the question of life after death, but it is not strong evidence, no stronger than the evidence we get about alien abductions. From a third person perspective there are likely to be a thousand and one explanations that can concocted and which are consistent with this perspective, but which make no recourse to life after death, starting, for example, with the explanation that conceivably the whole story is bogus (although some checking with sources might at least quickly eliminate that one from the inquiry)

Myers himself attempts to explain Alexander’s account in terms of confabulation:

These were stories that he built later, as he was coming to grips with that past trauma, and they were a means of coping with a huge painful gap in his memory. We know that this is what our brains do; it fills gaps in our knowledge with imaginary events to maintain continuity, a process called confabulation.

Here Myers requires the highly intelligent and critical Alexander to sit on a huge empty hole in his experience as it slowly gets filled in over a period of time and yet be unaware that it’s happening; is Alexander likely to be any less intellectually aware of this possibility than Myers? Rather than positing that Alexander had no experience while he was under, (As Myers suggests) more likely, I feel,  is that Alexander had some initial fragmentary experiences thrown up, perhaps, by a sensory deprived brain (not unlike Charles Bonnet syndrome). These fragments were then given some kind of continuity through further confabulation. Perhaps....

But in any case there is, I feel, something unsatisfactory about these attempts to explain away Alexander’s experience: Why hasn’t Alexander thought of this kind of thing himself? In fact, it is likely he has thought of it, but may be his first person “epiphany” was far more compelling and coherent than any explanation coming from third party observers like Myers or myself. As the saying goes: The man with an experience is never at the mercy of man with an argument! . Science depends on a dialogue that brings theoretical narratives and experience into a contention that seeks ultimate synthesis but allows neither theory nor experience complete dominance.  Therefore I'm prepared to at least give Alexander the credence of a doubt.

The big gripe I have with people like Myers is that one gets the impression they are unable to entertain a measure of self-doubt in their explanations. They live in the service of a particular, exclusive and ulterior ontological outlook, an outlook that is so thoroughgoing as to exclude even a small degree of reasonable doubt. Whilst an explanation of Alexander’s narrative in terms of confabulation built on fragmentary experience may be the best shot explanation from third parties such as myself there seems to be no accompanying leeway in Myers epistemology which allows him to simultaneously host alternative explanations; anyone who so much as courts a contradiction of Myers' ulterior metaphysical ontology is regarded by him as a mental cripple.

How PZ Myers habitually sees those who are less than enthusiastic about his ulterior ontology. (Dr Eben Alexander is pictured on the  right)

EbenAlexander's neurosurgeon mates are queuing up to operate on PZ Myers' brain. 

Meaningless Conflict

Boudry and Plantinga argue about the bit that God did or didn’t do.

(Picture from http://www.faradayschools.com/re-topics/re-year-10-11/god-of-the-gaps/  )

My favourite atheist, Larry Moran, has once again alerted me to some very interesting material that warrants a blog post. In a post entitled Boundry vs. Plantinga and dated September 20^th Larry gives us news of a review by Maarten Boudry of Alvin Plantinga’s book Where the Conflict Really Lies. This review can be found in the IHPST newsletter here. (Just search for “Boudry”). Needless to say atheist Boudry pretty much rubbishes Plantinga who is Christian. For myself, however, I find I am unable to support either side of this debate because both parties seem to be deploying some very dubious concepts and arguments. To be fair I haven’t read Plantinga and I am only going on Boudry’s representations, so it could be all Boudry’s fault. Below I have reproduced the section of the review I’m going to consider here:

In Part I, Plantinga argues that theism is not in conflict with evolutionary science, only with unguided evolution, which is a metaphysical add-on, not a part of evolutionary theory proper. But what about the thesis that the source of mutations is random, an assumption that is part and parcel of evolutionary theory? “Random” in this context does not mean pure chance, but rather without foresight, or not necessarily concordant with the organism’s adaptive needs. According to Plantinga, random mutation is compatible with God orchestrating the whole process. It is just God’s way of creating novelty. But there is no wedge to drive between “random” and “unguided”. If God is steering evolution in the right direction, making sure that suitable mutations arise, the mutations cannot be “random” in the technical sense, for then they would occur for the benefit of the organism (or whichever plan is on God’s mind). This becomes clear when Plantinga, strangely enough, endorses creationist Michael Behe’s argument from “irreducible complexity” (IC, see further), a pseudoscientific concept that has been completely rejected by the biological community. Behe’s argument is that the evolution of IC systems requires the simultaneous occurrence of different beneficial mutations, which is exceedingly unlikely. Therefore, some intelligent designer must have monitored the development of IC systems, if not by miraculous creation, then at least by causing the requisite mutations for natural selection to work on. But then, obviously, the mutations arise to meet the organism’s adaptive needs, and are no longer “random”. That is exactly the point of Behe’s argument. Besides, why doesn’t God skip the cruel selection part and create a whole population of well-adapted organisms without further ado? (See below for Plantinga’s answer to the problem of evil.)

The thesis that mutations are random (i.e., unguided), rather than being a metaphysical afterthought, has been amply demonstrated and is accepted as the null hypothesis by evolutionary biologists. Experiment after experiment has shown that there is no evidence of nonrandom mutations arising because an organism “needs” them. Further, if some intelligent agent is triggering mutations after all, it seems that he/she/it is causing precisely the kind and rate of mutations that one would expect if the process were entirely undirected. Plantinga’s effort to stave off the conflict between theism and evolution is a failure. Either he is buying into creationist fantasies that have been put to rest long ago, or he is hammering on the excessively weak claim that it is logically and metaphysically possible that, all evidence to the contrary, evolution unfolds under supernatural guidance. But if the bar for rational belief is lowered to mere logical possibility, and the demand for positive evidence dropped, then no holds are barred. Evolution (or gravity, plate tectonics, lightning, for that matter) could as well be directed by space aliens, Zeus or the flying spaghetti monster. (I was going to  include the devil in the list, but then it turns out that, on page 59, Plantinga has no qualms at all about treating the horned one as a serious explanation. There goes my reductio.)

In the above I see no cognizance of the single most important factor which makes or breaks standard evolutionary theory*, namely the critical importance of the physical regime in making the evolution of organic configurations possible. It is this regime which determines the size and shape of the space of permissible configurations in which random thermodynamic shufflings are taking place. If this space is wrongly shaped or too large then the thermodynamic agitations which effectively constitute the computational activity which “seeks out” stable organic configurations, is easily overwhelmed. But if our physical regime actually returns a sufficiently constrained shape and size to configuration space then the evolution of organic forms may have a realistic probability.

If for the sake of argument we assume that the latter is the case then no further “guidance” (whatever that means) is needed for evolution; there is then sufficient mathematical providence for evolution to proceed. For if the configuration space set up by our physical regime is sufficiently constricted then the random thermodynamic shufflings become the computational searching by which the configurations of life are located and locked into place by the evolutionary ratchet.

The “shuffling” patterns of randomness (constituting the natural engine of computation) are no more and no less than that; namely, a particular class of mathematical patterning. How then are we to distinguish between patterns that are guided (Plantinga) and patterns that are unguided (Boudry)? What criterion do we use to distinguish between guided and unguided patterns? To me the dispute between Boudry and Plantinga about the nature of evolution seems to be Unintelligible. Unless, of course, it is claimed that our physical regime is insufficiently constrained to impose the right shape and size on configuration space – in which case the evolution of life would require something extra – perhaps some unknown physics or even the enigmatic “tinkerings” of a homunculus intelligence working behind the scenes, not unlike Maxwell’s demon! If so then Boudry and Plantinga would have a meaningful dispute. Otherwise I see little content in their argument.

However, if the mechanisms of evolution (and OOL) are as the evolutionists think they are then I agree with Boudry that the random shufflings of the computational engine are going to be statistically independent of an organism’s need to survive: Unlike Maxwell’s demon those shufflings don’t have any information about the direction in which they should take; in fact that’s precisely why a search needs to be conducted! But I disagree with Boudry when he says that Irreducible Complexity is a pseudoscientific concept. You see, if Boudry accepts the established view of evolutionary mechanisms then he is implicitly accepting that configuration space has been arranged with the right shape and size needed to confer upon those mechanisms a realistic probability of generating organic forms. This shape requires stable organic structures to be close enough together in configuration space to form a linked set so that evolutionary drift can proceed in a series of incremental steps; where each step is a small jump to the next relatively stable organic form. This condition whereby organic structures form a linked set in configuration space is what may be termed “Reducible Complexity”. But in positing this concept we beg the question of whether or not it is in fact the case: What if organic configurations do not form this connected set? What if organic forms are isolated islands of stability in a huge sea of unstable configurations? Irreducible Complexity as a concept is simply the negation of reducible complexity and as such it is both a meaningful idea and the subject of legitimate scientific inquiry. Should irreducible complexity actually be the case then needless to say the established view of evolutionary mechanisms would simply not work and the posited engine of natural history would have to be fundamentally revised. Perhaps this may explain why Boudry shrugs off IC in an offhand way, rather than face the uncharted intellectual vista it brings into view. He is using the word “pseudoscience” as the establishment once used the cry of “heresy”.

If engines of evolution and OOL are as the scientific establishment would very likely prefer them, then this entails  the supply of some very particular mathematical conditions: These conditions must be constantly maintained as the status quo of our physical constitution and therefore these conditions are arguably an ongoing form of guidance, although guidance that is rather different from the default “interventional” theology that envisages some kind of homunculus or "demon"; a model that is affirmed by many theists and vehemently attacked by atheists like Boudry.

Boudry’s review naturally runs into other issues like the logical possibility of miracles, the problem of suffering and the destructive self-referencing of naturalism. I may look at these in a later post.

Footnote

*In this context I’m bundling organic evolution and OOL into one package and calling it “evolution”.

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Hard and Soft Science in the Junk DNA Debate

....and sociology, history and theology books are even more comfortable!

(Picture from: http://www.dipity.com/sciencegoddess/LolCats-in-Science/ )

Atheist Biochemist Larry Moran will no doubt think of me as a nincompoop for entertaining theism. Nevertheless, although he is a very dogmatic atheist I have found him generally polite in dealing with theists like myself. I may disagree with Larry’s vision of science and find him a bit of a curmudgeon, but on balance I would describe him as a gentleman and scholar and by and large fair in his comments (If you are on the right side of him!). In any case I’d far rather leave comments on his blog than the blog of PZ Myers, a blog which is populated by some very rough customers indeed, not to mention Myers himself who lumps together all theists for his uncompromising contempt. His blog is more like a piranha invested river and when the fish there are not ripping to shreds hapless Godbots they start tearing at one another. In comparison Larry’s blog seems a much more civilised environment.

Perhaps the foregoing explains why I surprised myself in feeling a bit sorry for Larry when I found him heart aching over the latest news from the ENCODE project which is being touted (or “spun” according to Larry) as evidence that most (~ 80% ?)  of the human genome has some kind of function after all. Larry has put a huge intellectual stake in the possibility that the genome carries a lot of redundant information – that is, information that has little or no function. This probably follows from his view that evolution is primarily a random trial and error process, a process that is likely to leave in its wake an untidy backwash of redundant configurations. To Larry, cosmic disorder is a sure sign of a lack of design and therefore absence of evidence of God, or for that matter any other kind of intelligent designer. Larry atheism’s is bound up with questions over the nature of randomness; in particular the philosophical question of whether or not we should consider it unremarkable and attribute to it a null computational complexity.

Now I’ll admit that I’m not much of a biologist or a sociologist (two subjects I consider to be related in a broad inter-disciplinary spectrum). My background is in physics and programming and this has probably  left me with an intellectual impediment; it means that when I hear the term “prediction” I think of it in very mechanical terms: I imagine a theoretical mathematical/algorithmic system that is tentatively put forward as isomorphic in some way with the ontology of our world. One then cranks the handle of this mechanical system and it churns out fairly clear cut “predictions” (Although sometimes with a probability attached). If the predictions fail then because the theoretical narratives of the “hard” sciences are relatively simple affairs with few adjustable variables then theoreticians don’t have much maneuver room to “get out of that!”.

Needless to say in the soft sciences this is much less the case. The soft sciences deal with highly complex objects that may comprise of an open ended set of impinging variables. Consequently “predictions”, so called, are far less unequivocal: A failed prediction need not necessarily be fatal as it may be possible to propose not just a variable adjustment, but perhaps hitherto unknown variables in order to accommodate an unexpected result.*

On balance evolutionary theory is, to my mind, a soft(ish) science, and this is particularly clear with evolutionary psychology, a “discipline” that generates great contention; a sure sign that people’s retrospectively applied imaginations are hard at work here, untrammeled by the dispassionate tester and arbiter of actual involuntary experience. Similarly, I can’t see how the absence or presence of junk DNA is a hard prediction of evolutionary theory. In fact Larry quotes another non-biologist who is now trying to make evolutionary sense, post-hoc, of the claimed absence of Junk DNA:

So they assumed it [Junk DNA] was left over from evolution, had no current function, and was, literally, junk. As Francis Crick, one of the Nobel Prize winners for helping discover the structure of DNA, put it, non-coding DNA has “little specificity and conveys little or no selective advantage to the organism”. Right. As though nature would waste that much energy.

Here we have a evidence that evolutionary theory can very readily assume a retrospective sense making role; it’s not that there’s anything wrong with that because in the absence of a capability to arrive at hard predictions embedding post-facto data in an imaginative theoretical narrative may be the only way we can make (controversial) progress.

I don’t think anyone is going to be surprised to hear that just at the moment the Homunculus ID community are making hay while the sun is shining. They have long maintained that their version of ID “predicts” (Haha!) that most of the genome is functional. To them the “spin” surrounding the ENCODE project is a great vindication.  But the irony is that to my mind the absence of Junk DNA is hardly a hard prediction of even Homunculus ID, as I shall now explain....

Evolutionary theory may be a softish science, but in my view Intelligent Design theory is a lot softer. As I made clear in my series on ID predictions it is difficult to get any hard predictions out of ID at all. Intelligence is in fact synonymous with personality and personality is a blend of emotion (another word for motivation) and the ability to solve computational problems. Necessarily intelligence carries with it a large measure of inscrutability about its motives and methods. Because, then, personality is by definition a highly complex object with many hidden variables the only way I can see of getting predictions out of ID is to start making assumptions about the nature of the intelligence one is dealing with; in particular one might assume that the intelligence which designed life has similarities with a human molecular engineer and one can then apply a whole array of observations on technological (wo)man to anticipate how an alien molecular engineer (or “Homunculus”) might design life. The upshot was that I could by and large agree, after a fashion, with most of the predictions that appeared on the Uncommon Descent post that was the subject of my ID predictions series. But the irony here is that the absence of Junk DNA was one of the few predictions I just couldn’t confirm as an outcome of Homunculus ID. It seemed to me that it was a toss-up as to whether an alien molecular engineer may or may not leave “commented out” information in the genome about his essays in biology.

Summarising: It seems that the junk DNA debate is in a position where the respective sides are investing themselves in conclusions that as far as I can see are not unequivocal predictions of their respective logic. The trouble is the entrenchment is now too far gone for the two sides to easily back out..

It is clear that the homunculus assumption is by no means sound: After all if we are ultimately dealing with the kind of God envisaged by Christianity then we are dealing with something of an entirely different genus to a tinkering alien or quasi-human intelligence. God is an immersive totalizing reality, the entity all things find themselves to be immersed “in”. (Acts 17:27-29 ). As a fellow Christian once said to me: It is as if we are a thought in the mind of God and as such need constant attention and maintenance as thoughts do or else conceivably they could be snuffed out at any time. That idea has not just stayed with me but was reinforced when I started probing the nature of intelligence and found it to be an exploratory searching process: In fact the cosmos is shot through with the “search-test-reject-and-select” paradigm. As has been remarked before, the universe does look more like a giant thought than a giant piece of hardware tinkered with by an alien intelligence.

The pervasive nature of God in most conventional theologies is echoed in our cosmos, a cosmos necessarily pervaded by a grand logical hiatus. That hiatus is everywhere and everywhen. This pervading hiatus invites imaginative post-hoc theologies in order to make sense of it. But pervasive facts of life, like the peculiarity of there being something rather than nothing, are easily taken for granted as somehow intrinsically necessary in and of themselves: To a creature like (wo)man "programmed" to take note of changes in the status quo total immersion phenomena may be filtered out as not interesting.  Consequently theologies are always going to be controversial.

Footnote

* We are really talking about a spectrum of objects here – there is no is sharp demarcation between the objects of the soft sciences and those of the hard sciences.  Hard science imperceptibly merges into soft science.